classic genius, with which his solitary fancy is most gratified, have
been rendered degraded, in his imagination, by their connexion with
tears, with errors, and with punishment; so that the Eclogues of Virgil
and Odes of Horace are each inseparably allied in association with the
sullen figure and monotonous recitation of some blubbering school-boy. If
to these mental distresses are added a delicate frame of body, and a mind
ambitious of some higher distinction than that of being the tyrant of
childhood, the reader may have some slight conception of the relief which
a solitary walk, in the cool of a fine summer evening, affords to the
head which has ached, and the nerves which have been shattered, for so
many hours, in plying the irksome task of public instruction.

"To me these evening strolls have been the happiest hours of an unhappy
life; and if any gentle reader shall hereafter find pleasure in perusing
these lucubrations, I am not unwilling he should know, that the plan of
them has been usually traced in those moments, when relief from toil and
clamour, combined with the quiet scenery around me, has disposed my mind
to the task of composition.

"My chief haunt, in these hours of golden leisure, is the banks of the
small stream, which, winding through a 'lone vale of green bracken,'
passes in front of the village school-house of Gandercleugh. For the
first quarter of a mile, perhaps, I may be disturbed from my meditations,
in order to return the scrape, or doffed bonnet, of such stragglers among
my pupils as fish for trouts or minnows in the little brook, or seek
rushes and wild-flowers by its margin. But, beyond the space I have
mentioned, the juvenile anglers do not, after sunset, voluntarily extend
their excursions. The cause is, that farther up the narrow valley, and in
a recess which seems scooped out of the side of the steep heathy bank,
there is a deserted burial-ground, which the little cowards are fearful